Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

[peter]

This was a sentance that Noam Chomsky came up with to illustrate that correct use of grammer does not imply the presence of meaning. He proposed the sentance as gramatically correct but with no possible meaning to his year-group thereby instigating a fever of activity on the parrt of the students tp prove him wrong. Here is one of the best attempts:-

It can only be the thought of verdure to come that prompts us in the autumn to buy these dormant white lumps of vegetable matter covered in papery skin and lovingly to plant them and care for them. It is a marvel to me that under this cover they are labouring unseen at such a rate within to give us the sudden awesome beauty of spring flowering bulbs. While winter rules the earth reposes but these colorless green ideas sleep furiously

In his book Is that a fish in your ear author David Bellos cites the above example not to demonstrate that words can be played with to confound even the most authoritative generalisations, but to contend that it is impossible to construct a gramatically correct sentance in any language that cannot, by context, be made to have meaning. That seems to me to be a big statement. Could we put it to the test?

(nb I'm not sure the students attempt above works in the true sense because he does not use the sentance as a stand alone one, but includes it in a larger one. Does this count?)

[Vader]

I'm not linguist enough, but I would agree with Bellos. The human mind's capability to encode meaning as metaphors (or such) and to decode those metaphors again is a powerful tool.

Since lexemes not only have clearly defined denotational meaning but also a potentially unlimited amount of connotational meanings it is very likely that every sentence (I always spell that word with an "e") has to convey semantic content.

[Vraith]

Ummm...I'm pretty sure [been a long time, but looking at wiki, it seems I'm not completely confused] the purpose of the sentence was just to point out that syntax and semantics are different kinds of things, [even if they work together] and the shortcomings of the prevailing models of syntax at the time.

Bellos is probably right, humans can MAKE meaning from almost anything...I'd go even farther and include the other stuff...it is impossible to construct any "sentence" whatsoever, whether grammatical or non-grammatical, that SOMEONE can't construct a meaning for.

[Vader]

It's a small step from semantics to semiotics.

[Vraith]

It's a small step from semantics to semiotics.

Heh...perhaps, but it is a step upwards...whereas Grammartarians [syntacticians?] want to insist [like all authoritarians] that they rule the world...but it really is a step down.

[Vader]

From my teaching experience kids learn grammar better when they don't know it's grammar they're learning. New structures are acquired easier when they come in a context the kids can relate to. This goes to show that in the learning process semantics are more important than pure syntactics. This seems to be the case regardless if it's learning your native tongue or a second language. Only a very small percentage of people seem to be able to access language via abstract grammatical concepts. These are usually natural born accountants or bureaucrats.

[Vraith]

From my teaching experience kids learn grammar better when they don't know it's grammar they're learning. New structures are acquired easier when they come in a context the kids can relate to. This goes to show that in the learning process semantics are more important than pure syntactics. This seems to be the case regardless if it's learning your native tongue or a second language. Only a very small percentage of people seem to be able to access language via abstract grammatical concepts. These are usually natural born accountants or bureaucrats.

Now we're definitely in the same boat. It isn't only your experience that shows that.

If educational systems followed the research, there wouldn't me any grammar/syntax lessons in school AT ALL until the teens.

Tons of reading and talking, but no "conjugate the verb 'to kill." unless you were reading the related short story.

And there wouldn't [though this touches semantic side as well] be any vocabulary lists/tests either.
Or spelling tests/"bees."

[Vader]

No vocabulary tests in my class. I rather have my kids work with context oriented world fields.

[sgt.null]

Marx/Lenin
Lennon/Marx
good dog

[Avatar]

What are you bunch blathering about?

It can only be the thought of verdure to come that prompts us in the autumn to buy these dormant white lumps of vegetable matter covered in papery skin and lovingly to plant them and care for them. It is a marvel to me that under this cover they are labouring unseen at such a rate within to give us the sudden awesome beauty of spring flowering bulbs. While winter rules the earth reposes but these [/b]colorless green ideas sleep furiously[/b]

That's brilliant. Both the applied context and the original line. As soon as I saw the title of the thread, I thought it was poetic.

Anyway, it's context that gives meaning to anything though. Without it, the line is meaningless. Which is why it had to be included in a longer sentence. Not to do so would indeed render it meaningless.

But the author could have given the same context by saying "flower bulbs" in response to it. That too would be sufficient.

Even apparently meaningless words would have context if you knew what was in the mind of the speaker. Because there's a reason the person is saying them.

Chomsky wasn't being meaningless, he was just being poetic. He obviously didn’t realise it though.

He thought he was making an utterly self-negating sentence...something can't be green and colourless. Ideas can't sleep, and you can't sleep furiously.

Of course we on the other hand thrive on paradox.

--A

[I'm Murrin]

Taken literally, of course, the sentence is nonsense. It's just that we think in metaphors.

[Vader]

We always do. That's why translation machine don't work.

[peter]

The book *Is That a Fish In YOUR Ear* is indeed about translation and is throwing up some very thought provoking stuff. One of these is the idea of how words that function if you like as units of meaning, are often not translatable into words of the same meaning in another. There is apparently for example no word for 'blue' in russian. Instead they have two totally separate words - one for the shades of blue we call 'light' or 'pale' blue, and another for those 'royal' or dark blues. Similarly there is no word for 'cheese' - hard cheeses come under one word and soft cheeses under another, totally different from the first.

Another problem is with 'boundries of meaning'. These by no means always fall in the same place in different languages making translation of political agreements etc from one language to another a process fraught with potential for misunderstanding. The limits of meaning of a word in one language can easily sit over parts of the meanings of two words in the recieving language. One wonders if translation of poetry for example is possible at all in a meaning full way.

[deer of the dawn]

The phrase for "joy" in Hausa is farin ciki. Literally translated, it says "white stomach". The word sha means drink, consume, or take. So to take someone's hand is to "drink" it. Teen numbers are expressed as "ten drinks one, ten drinks two", etc. Finally, there is one word, ji, which means feel, hear, sense, or smell. So sometimes people are heard to say "I am hearing the smell of food". The phrase, See you later is expressed as, "until we feel together" or perhaps "until we are in each other's hearing". The phrase "feel me?" is often heard in Hausa in conversation (Ka ji?).

[Vader]

The book *Is That a Fish In YOUR Ear* ...

Which goes along with Stanley Fish's "Is there a text in this class?" and Robert Scholes witty answer "Is there a Fish in this text?" When linguists go apeshit ...

[Avatar]

Taken literally, of course, the sentence is nonsense. It's just that we think in metaphors.

Well yes. But then everything self-contradictory is meaningless. Which covers most humans I would guess.

--A

[Vraith]

Taken literally, of course, the sentence is nonsense. It's just that we think in metaphors.

Well yes. But then everything self-contradictory is meaningless. Which covers most humans I would guess.

--A

Taken literally, literally literally doesn't exist. We not only think IN metaphor, metaphor IS thought. [Which probably means neurons are grammar].

BTW, there are some prominent folk out there that argue that Shakespeare isn't great, it is mostly meaningless crap cuz it includes so much self-contradiction/mutual exclusion.